>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/31/03 11:14 AM >>> > B. Ollman says somewhere that Engels as well as Marx didn't use any firm > labels, mostly saying something like "our historical method," etc. > Carrol
I think Marx and Engels did use "firm labels" (cf. the Communist Manifesto) but these labels changed and evolved over time, depending on their own concerns and changes in the societies in which they lived. Many quotes could be obtained from their writings to the effect that definitions are relative, and that one should not get to obsessed with definitions and understand their limits, since this might substitute a semantic dispute for the understand of a real process or relationship. Also, a dialectical understanding of an object aimed to understand it in motion, rather than statistically, and for this purpose a fixed definition was of limited use. Nevertheless the continuity of themes in their thought, through various different formulations at different times in thier lives, is remarkable, so that you can never say that there is an absolute rupture in their thinking, or a revocation of what they said earlier. J.
